


Metahumans do not play dice

by brittlestars



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: A non-musician's attempt at music as an allegory for love and subatomic particle physics, Ancient East Asian soulmate woo, F/M, Found Family, M/M, Multi, Quantum mechanics are getting a little too macro scale for Cisco, Soulmates, Spooky particle physics as metaphor for relationships, Your daily reminder that Cisco Ramon is a hugely powerful metahuman just coming into his powers, speedpurring, this ogre has many layers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-02 23:49:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16797157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brittlestars/pseuds/brittlestars
Summary: Ever since Eobard, Cisco has hated anything to do with destiny. Even as he grows into a superhero, he is haunted by ghosts of his past and the ceaseless temptation to tinker with the fundamental forces of the universe. But when Barry is lost on a mission, Cisco has to decide between continuing to hide his affections or embracing a hopelessly unrequited love to bring Barry back.A story about love. A story about losing things, and finding them. A story about embracing, and a story about letting go.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sibley (ferns)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/gifts), [trufflemores](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trufflemores/gifts), [greenglowsgold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenglowsgold/gifts).



> For
> 
>   * **Fern** , whose fic introduced me to Armando as a character and taught me that family angst can be the best angst;
>   * **trufflemores** , whose fic reminds me that science can be poetry too and among whose many gifts to the fandom is the inspiration that is speedpurring;
>   * **greenglowsgold** , who wrote the best "Cisco grows into his powers by tracking Barry across the multiverse by his heartbeat" fic a fan could ask for ([Mirror, Mirror](https://archiveofourown.org/series/411828)). 
> 


Cisco first hears the Japanese tale of the red string of fate just a few months after the funeral. He scoffs at the idea of two people's destinies being intertwined. Even as young as thirteen, he knows there are too many people in the world for something like that to ever work. 

But, some small part of him wonders: if it were true, whose heart was left trailing a broken red string when his brother Armando died?

A year later he's got junior standing in high school but he's taking physics courses at the local community college. There, he learns about quantum entanglement. Two intimately connected particles can remain in sync without physical proximity, at least in theory. A dormant thing in him rumbles a low and pensive "Hrmmm..." but it's still too early for him to hear this voice, much less make sense of it. 

And so he diligently takes notes as the physics lecturer drones on. He doesn't bother to ask questions; like most of his teachers, Professor Freeman had asked him long ago to save his questions for independent research because they were invariably too advanced for both the rest of the class and the instructor herself. 

This is a new concept to him and so he jots: 

_Quantum entanglement: pairs or groups of particles whose states cannot be described singly/independently. Quantum state must be described for system as a whole. Each particle compensates for the state of the other automatically, instantly._

This gets him thinking about a design for an ansible, and he begins doodling circuit diagrams for such a device based on the assumption that two entangled particles could be separated in space but still bound up in one another. Faster-than-lightspeed interstellar communication is probably impossible, but the impossible is more fun than Intro E & M and soon enough he's smiling as he works. Ursula K. Le Guin would be proud, he thinks.

The sketch is crammed in next to a music staff annotating a melody he might share with Dante. He's on the fence about it: he wants to re-connect with his remaining family after Armando's passing, but music as a peace offering feels cheesy, like how Tia Nina gives him a science trivia board game for Christmas every year because the only thing she understands about him is "Cisco is smart." 

He'll wait, he decides. Sharing music with Dante can wait until a better time.

Seasons come and go. The Ramon household is quiet, as if permanently in a state of mourning. Cisco's parents are stuck, can't acknowledge that they've got two sons left alive. The only time mama's face lights up any more is when Dante plays music, on the piano or the guitar.

Dante's been playing a lot, lately. He's getting pretty good. 

In a sudden decision by dad and grandpa that Cisco doesn't understand, the family moves away from Detroit to Central City, and this can't be the right time for Cisco to share his song, not when it feels like they are abandoning Armando's memory to their old hometown, moving on from the places Armando used to be.

Cisco graduates from Central City University three years early. His parents are proud. They're smiling, anyway. 

But college graduation also doesn't feel like the right time to share Armando's song, not with Cisco's remarkable academic success. He doesn't want to rub it in Dante's face, not when Dante's application to Conservatory is rejected, again. 

And then Cisco gets an advanced degree and then he's hired on the spot when the industry leader (Harrison Wells himself!) meets him at a conference and this also doesn't seem like the right time to try to re-connect the remains of the family. Cisco always moving forward, Armando always dead, empty casket cold in the ground. 

By the time the particle accelerator explodes, Cisco is no longer in the habit of visiting his family. Three days pass before they think to call him.

With the Flash, Cisco's finding a new family of friends in the rubble, a family that feels right and good and comfortable, without cold silence, mournful looks, sad sighs. Caitlin is distant but she responds kindly as Cisco learns how to be there for her in the right ways, the gentle ways. He feels important and accepted, leaned on and trusted. 

Cisco doesn't forget Armando, never, not quite. But he does file the memory away, packing it with care and placing it like a delicate box on a high, dusty shelf in his mind. Somehow, Dante and mama and dad and grandpa sit on the same shelf alongside. "Their hearts are still beating," he reminds himself. 

And yet they're packed away just the same. 

* * *

The red thread of fate idea doesn't enter his mind again until age 26. Jessie mentions it while talking on the couch with Barry about some anime show, and, unbidden, Cisco blurts, "It's not red. It isn't any color."

This earns him side-eye from the speedsters, Jessie lobbing a handful of popcorn at him. "Suddenly an anime expert?" she chides. He isn't, but that's not the point. There is no way for him to explain, so he shrugs and begins picking at the popcorn in his lap, staring at each piece before finally eating it. Jessie rolls her eyes, turning back to the TV screen as Barry begins to ramble, "You know, the red twine thing actually originates in Chinese mythology..." 

Cisco tastes salt and oily butter. He chews idly. The world is fading and muffled around him but the flavors are enough to anchor him to the moment. 

Not a color, he thinks. 

It's a feeling. A texture and an echo and a movement that pulses through him, a fine and wavering filter layering his senses, orienting him along invisible but utterly tangible field lines. 

The past has trained Cisco to fear a speedster suddenly still, to fear a speedster's intense but calm stare, but he's too swept away to see Barry considering him in a long, quiet look from across the couch. 

He only realizes the movie is over when Barry touches his upper arm, fingers feather-light against his skin. Cisco blinks rapidly, eyes watering. He shakes his hair across his face to hide but he's not sure that Barry doesn't see past his guise. 

He'd been thinking about destiny. How it felt, how it tasted. Destiny is more than some word uttered by the mouth of a demonic once-mentor, more than malice and spite vocalized.

Cisco swallows reflexively though his mouth is dry. Destiny is threads holding the worlds together. Destiny is ripples, ripples radiating through the texture of the multiverse, radiating out from–

"–Cisco, I was asking if you wanted a ride home?" Barry's fingers are now on his shoulder, squeezing gently. 

Cisco stops himself just shy of cringing away. He stares into Barry's face, blinking. 

"...Actually, I could do with a walk. Feel the fresh air, you know?"

What he's trying to say is: Walk me home? 

And Barry gets the message, of course he does, because twenty minutes later finds them on the boardwalk by the river. It isn't the most direct route home, but the weather is cool and they can both tell that Cisco needs some grounding. The air off the water helps. Something about its sour humidity dampens the world, muffles things and keeps them from being too intense in his ears. 

Barry tries to make small talk along the way but Cisco is distant, distracted. They soon fall into companionable silence.

Eventually Barry ducks under a railing to sit on the concrete lip of the boardwalk, kicking his legs into empty air and craning his neck to look up. Despite the city lights a good smattering of stars are visible. 

Cisco hangs back, watching Barry's silhouette. It is a black and empty shadow in the glinting water. He's seeing the shape of Barry, void of detail. He wonders how many versions of Barry from other universes could fit that gap. Would he be able to tell one Barry from the next? 

Of course he would. Maybe not before, but now that his powers are a living thing inside him...

Cisco wants to walk up to that blank space, that Barry-shaped hole, and grasp it by the shoulders. He wants to ground himself with Barry's too-real presence, wants to reach out and connect, to make an honest-to-God, agonizing connection, the kind where he bares his soul and pours out every emotion in an unending torrent. He doesn't have the words but maybe there's something - something in making and holding eye contact, in nailing down that flitting, beautiful, fae creature by force of will and heart and telling him: "Barry, stop. Stop all that's racing in your perception and miraculous mind and take a second to look at me, to really look at me." 

Cisco can see it in his head and he doesn't know how many times before a Cisco has done this but it feels almost possible, next-to-true, an expression of love just this side of inevitability, so close it stops his breath. 

It's like this: Cisco can feel (but not see) the vector field that inevitably traps him in Barry's orbit.

But uncertainty, ever uncertainty, keeps him from crashing to the core, his vibrating being a dense, fuzzy, uncollapsed cloud. 

Every time he thinks he knows where he stands on Barry, he realizes he doesn't know where they're going. If he knew where they were heading, he wouldn't know where he stood.

They're a system, and can only be described as a whole. 

So, along all the edges of Barry's life, Cisco hovers, amorphous. 

Cisco suddenly registers Barry standing at his side, voice concerned. "'sco, you're shivering."

Cisco glances down at the back of his hand. He doesn't feel cold but his skin is puckered with goose pimples, armhairs erect. He watches a minute ripple pass over them, hairs bowing like heavy-headed grain nodding in a rice field breeze. 

When Cisco looks back up, it is a warm and bright day. His vision is tinged blue. But, again, it isn't a color. It's a feeling, a whole-body texture, an echo of is-was-shall-never-will-always.

Being thrust into a vibe doesn't physically hurt (that comes after, with nosebleeds and throbbing headaches), but Cisco still has to orient himself to being in another time. 

He blinks and realizes belatedly he remains in the same location; it looks different owing to the _enormous_ wall of water rushing toward him along the river. Adrenaline kicks in despite his not having a corporeal presence and Cisco turns to run before he can rein in his fight-or-flight response with the stern scolding that this isn't actually happening to him. He wonders, not for the first time, if a vibe could give him a heart attack, could kill him dead while standing still. 

And there on the hill is Barry, suit on and mask off. He is leaning in toward Iris, close. They're kissing. Despite himself, Cisco can hear them. He hears heartbeats and the gentle slide of tears and the shuddering grinding of his teeth as he tries to shut it all out and force himself home. His Barry is in this place, but not this time. 

When he blinks out of the vibe, Barry is grasping his shoulders gently, rubbing his thumbs in tight circles with just a touch of speed-vibration. Barry is probably aiming to soothe, but Cisco's memory flashes back to his death with a sudden mental jerk. 

The demon had the softest echo of genuine pride in his vibrating death-hand and dammnit! Damn that man, that monster in yellow and soot, his eyes like burning, piercing pools of lightning! Damn him for tainting this all with fear and anger. 

Cisco is shrinking back in re-lived terror, in phantom, remembered pain. In his mind, Eobard Thawne is shredding his heart. He speaks of destiny.

Cisco blinks. In his mind, Barry Allen is kissing Iris West. They radiate warmth and love in waves that crash into the skin across Cisco's whole body. 

He shudders, claws his way back to the present, to the here and the now. He rubs the heels of his hands in his eyes, regaining his breath. 

"'God does not play dice.'" Cisco mutters to himself. 

Barry stops rubbing Cisco's arms for warmth long enough to peer into his face. "Sorry?"

"It's a quote. Einstein." Cisco shrugs Barry off and turns toward home, shoulders hunched. 

"I know that. Are we quoting Einstein now? How about the one with the fish and the bicycles?"

"It was fish and trees. Fish and bicycles was some Australian lady. I think." Cisco begins to walk away without further comment. 

"Whatever you saw doesn't necessarily happen," Barry reminds him. When Cisco doesn't respond, he calls "'sco, can I help you with something?"

"'God,'" Cisco repeats, "'does not play dice.' Good night, Barry." 

It's a long walk home. By the end, Cisco is shivering again. 

His "great and honorable destiny," ladies and gentlemen: forever tortured by memories not his own, forever the third wheel to the multiverse's most loving couple. 

* * *

The days after the whole deal with his brother's Earth-2 doppleganger (Rupture: decent name, terrible outfit) are rough: Cisco has to acknowledge that he still has a family, that he still cares about them. And now, with his powers and the evil they seem to attract, he feels singularly responsible for their safety. 

Cisco remembers a time when all he had to give was a song for Armando, when he couldn't even bring himself to give that. He wonders if he's missed his chance to repair that bridge. Something in him feels uneasy, like laughing with Dante about the time he and Armando had crashed into a snowman on the sled Cisco had "improved" or about their unrealized childhood schemes to scare Armando's pet goldfish (long story) wouldn't be appropriate, not when there are multiple Earths that hold evil versions of themselves.

Dante doesn't want any part of the metahuman life; he is safer without that knowledge. 

Cisco certainly understands the desire to un-know. He wakes up most nights with throbbing headaches, he is too scared of sudden vibes to drive, he takes extra care not to touch people unexpectedly. But the worst is not being able to unlearn what he sees. The dark corners of the multiverse are better left unlit. 

But Cisco, Cisco cannot choose to unsee, cannot choose to look away, cannot shield his mind or battered heart.

And so he trudges onward, facing down demons with every imaginable ability and power. Sometimes the team can save the day, can save a life, can rescue a meta from the grasp of their own terrifying power. On those days he walks home, placing one foot in front of the other. He chants to himself: Better them than me.

The hollow pile of empty aspirin and sleeping pill bottles on his bedside table silently disagrees.


	2. Chapter 2

Cisco's a master of distraction. He arms himself with witty quips to re-direct attention from the strain in his voice, the bags under his eyes. Throwing himself into his work and his side projects, he almost distracts himself. 

When they're working on a case together at CCPD, Cisco and Barry don't need more than a glance to communicate volumes. There's one look for "I'll keep the officers busy while you vibe the scene," another for "I've found something way too fishy for this meta to be safe, let's wrap this up ASAP and get to S.T.A.R.," and another for "Could you maybe speed this up, please?" They have a least three separate signals for "Joe suspects something," but they also suspect that Joe suspects all three of those signals. 

When the Flash is working the streets alone, Cisco is always on comms. Caitlin is often also there, and she notices over the months that Cisco is growing introspective during the task. She suspects he's walking the edge of vibing Barry to keep tabs: their communication is increasingly one-sided, with Barry barely prompting before Cisco has already begun to offer a suggestion. 

Caitlin pulls Cisco aside after one blatant incident that results in Cisco's nose bleeding on the keyboard. "You've packed that suit full of surveillance tech, Cisco," she reminds him gently. "Is it really necessary to tire yourself out vibing him too?"

Holding a cotton ball to his nostril and titling his head to the side, Cisco wants to roll his eyes. He knows she's trying to look out for him, but he's trying to look out for Barry. "I'm getting better. Consider it training."

"There are safer ways to train, such as when Barry's life isn't on the line." When Cisco doesn't give in, she pushes: "Does Barry know?"

Cisco winces. "Probably? I didn't tell him but he's definitely noticed I don't need as much info over comms as before." He pulls back the cotton ball, glances at it, grimaces, and replaces it below his nose. "I won't stop. I've been able to spot something helpful before he has dozens of times. I can't just sit and do nothing."

"I suppose not," she concedes. "But please, Cisco, make sure I'm here to look after you. Or Iris. And tell Barry. He'll be thrilled that you're embracing your powers more freely."

"To stalk him."

Here, Caitlin grins, wry and with the sort of tight warmth that means she's thinking more than she'll say. "To monitor him in the line of duty."

Cait is right, of course. Barry is thrilled to see the suit Cisco's been hiding, black and yellow with hints of the Flash's red. They practice training together, looking forward to when Cisco feels ready to fight. Cisco doesn't think he will ever be comfortable with that idea but he wants to be prepared, he wants to be able to defend. 

Inevitably, a bad guy of the week forces their hand and Cisco steps into the Vibe suit before he feels ready. He looks to Barry, who nods solemnly and squeezes his shoulder in reassurance before whisking them away. 

Cisco's glad for the goggles. They help focus his vibes, help give him control, and they shield his eyes from the brutal winds of Barry's speed. 

And, most of all, they hide his face. He is terrified behind the goggles. But then his mouth starts to run with jokes and quotes and sly movie references and it isn't so bad. He hadn't expected the Vibe suit to come with its own personality; he didn't build that in. But there is a confidence in taking on a new persona. He wonders if this is what Spider-Man feels, before chiding himself that Spider-Man didn't exist, until he remembers that, in the multiverse, there probably is an Earth with an actual Spider-Man. 

Maybe he can pop over some time, trade one-liners. 

Surely there has to be another superhero out there terrified of their own abilities. Because that person is not Barry Allen. Barry's confidence, his at-ease demeanor, astound Cisco. He draws himself close to Barry as if that warmth were sunshine, light that he can bask in and somehow be clean and whole and good again. Somehow forget the dark pasts, the gray and uncertain future paths, the gritty realities that pour through his brain like dark water through a sieve. 

So Cisco continues working in the field with Barry. His Vibe persona gets to act tough and powerful and in control of his power (ha!) and his secret, hidden self gets to watch Barry up close, revel in awe and a quiet, stable sort of jealousy. 

When going out to face a bad guy, he circles around Barry. Together, they play the field as a wordless but effortless machine. It is the most natural thing in the world for Cisco to balance Barry, without thought. 

This is time for them. Barry and Cisco. 

Vibe and the Flash. 

* * *

Dante dies. Hit by a drunk driver. 

Another ghost drifting though the world, clutching the ragged end of severed red string.

Cisco adds a new, underlying voice to the melody of Armando's song. 

It's somehow even sadder than Armando's song alone. A two-voice harmony playing against a third part: empty silence.

He transcribes the notes for the funeral. The song feels incomplete, but then so does his life. 

When played on the piano at the funeral, it's beautiful. 

It doesn't help.

Life would be easier if the deaths felt random. 

But god, after all, does not play dice. It was bound to happen. 

Destiny. 

Cisco doesn't bother to ask Barry to go back and try to change things.

* * *

Barry encourages Cisco to expand, to experiment with his powers. Barry's childlike earnestness convices Cisco to once again wade through the weight of his personal mourning to tune into the multiverse. His bones sing and hum, hollow. Everything tastes like sadness, and like guilt. He leans into his powers. He tells himself it's not self-serving to want to see Barry's face light up with another smile. 

Breaching for convenient travel seems the logical next step. Creating a breach between two different places on the same Earth is much, much more difficult than linking locations across two different Earths. Both operations take finesse and a sort of inner quietude that Cisco is constantly surprised he can muster. But, he knows, part of being connected with the web of everything means he is somehow able to reach into himself and thereby reach out to anywhere in the multiverse. When he scales that connection back far enough, zooms out until the world is an invisible pinprick in a sea of stars and universes, resigned acceptance is inevitable. And so it is with that grounding that he learns to sync Here with There and then guide the vibrations between two points on an Earth into a sort of standing wave, the nodes like doorways on either side of a tunnel. 

He calls them boom tubes because it is silly and makes Iris laugh and Barry smile and Cait shake her head ruefully. If he can focus on their reactions, he can forget the power wavering at his fingertips, the fragile and delicate balance he holds open. This taste of power promises doorways to so much more.

Barry makes him practice. He knows it's a good idea but can't shake the low-lying dread that grows as his skill increases. It is becoming easy, so easy, to move across space. What is the next step? If he asks, the multiverse will answer, has to answer, has to divulge every secret to his all-seeing senses. 

But he doesn't ask. He doesn't want to know. 

He wants to hang out in Central City, watching movies and eating popcorn and occasionally saving the day for some poor meta whose powers are going haywire. I know how you feel, buddy, he thinks as he gifts them a pair of power-dampening cuffs, or else watches Barry lock them in the pipeline to cool down for a bit. I know how you feel.

He tries not to think of Dante. He tries not to think of Armando. 

One day there's a coded alert over the police radio for a bomb threat at the mall. As Cisco suits up, Barry verbally runs him through the plan. 

"I can search the place one floor at a time, bring any suspicious package to you on the roof. You can 'port it to a safe place."

Cisco nods. His nerves are already high strung though he doesn't even need to touch the maybe-bombs. He is literally just tasked with holding the door open as they pass by at hundreds of miles per hour. 

"The Badlands seems a reasonable place," Caitlin suggests. Cisco and Barry had both been thinking the same, but feared saying it aloud would remind her of Ronnie. 

Cisco nods. "Good call."

Barry reaches for Cisco. "Let's go," he says, bending at the knees to scoop Cisco into his arms. 

Cisco is already reasonably sure he could breach them both to the mall roof accurately but he doesn't say so. He is greedy for Barry to hold him, knowing any time they go into the field might be Barry's last. 

He tries not to think of Dante. He tries not to think of Armando. 

Instead, he lets Barry carry him away, a scant half second of whooshing, rushing proximity. 

On the roof, Barry comes skidding to a halt. He sets Cisco down and disappears as Cisco finesses open a breach to the barren Badlands. The aperture wavers but stays bright, more familiar than he'd dreamed months ago when power was nothing but nightmare.

Barry reappears but stops just shy of Cisco's breach. He's cradling a backpack in both arms. It looks heavy. He doesn't throw it through the breach. 

Cisco gestures with a hand. 

Barry shakes his head. "Caitlin," he says into his comm, "I think it's an infectious agent."

Cisco hears Caitlin gasp over his own groan. "Who plants a dirty bomb at a mall?"

"You need to open a boom tube to another Earth. We can't let this get out here."

"Excuse me, I thought we were in the business of stopping bioterrorists, not becoming them!"

"Cisco's right," Caitlin chides in their earpieces, "We can't risk infecting a random Earth."

"Can you breach into space?" Barry asks. 

The thought alone makes Cisco nauseous. Theoretically, outer space was no different than an intraworld breach like he'd been practicing. Practically, beyond Earth orbit was a much greater distance than across town. More importantly, he didn't have any frame or object of reference for space. Maybe the S.T.A.R. satellite by way of a sense-memory of his now-deceased ex-boyfriend from the communications department? He frowns at the thought of dragging up one more ghost to live in his head and linger in his heart. What's the harm in a little heartache to save the world? 

"Can you breach into space?" Barry repeats, stepping closer and reaching out a hand.

Cisco wills himself not to tremble under the touch. He shakes his head: no. "Just holding this open to the Badlands is exhausting." It's a small lie but they don't catch it. He lets the breach drop and sighs, resigned. "Another world is much easier." That, at least, is the truth.

Barry's eyes fill with lightning, going unfocused like he does when he's thinking long and fast. Cisco shifts his feet, watching the package in Barry's hand and wondering just how volatile its contents might be. 

After a few seconds, Barry exhales, his shoulders dropping. "I remember Jessie saying that huge swaths of Earth-2 are dead because of the War of the Americas - radioactive or something."

"Convenient," Cisco says. "She say where, exactly?"

Caitlin keys her mic. After a few seconds of typing and clicking sounds she reports, "Harry's records mention Singapore and western Indonesia, most of northern India, and the entire Florida peninsula."

Barry gulps, opening his mouth, but Cisco cuts him off. "Including the Florida Keys?"

"Looks like it, yes."

"Okay, give me a second." Cisco holds up a finger to hush Barry. "I can get you there, just... just be quiet and let me think."

It wasn't thinking so much as feeling, tuning in. He'd been on a family trip to the Florida Keys when he was a kid; a distant aunt still lives there. On this Earth, anyway. That is all the thread he needs. Cisco reaches into himself and then rides outward through the worlds.

Barry fidgets but keeps quiet, watching Cisco with a mix of hope and awe. Very few things about Cisco's abilities are showy, but Barry knows there is tremendous power being balanced behind the Vibe goggles.

"Got it," Cisco says.

He raises a fist, this time pointing to a different portion of the roof. He can't articulate why, but the link is more stable there. The breach opens immediately, blue-white edges flowing in on themselves. Cisco looks to Barry and nods. Barry returns the nod, jaw set, lips pressed together in a thin and certain line. He gives Cisco's shoulder another squeeze.

Caitlin speaks once more. "Barry, according to these records, the level of radioactivity in the area is hazardous but not immediately deadly. Ten minutes should be safe for you."

Barry resets his grasp on the mystery backpack. "Plenty of time."

Even as Barry's lightning disappears through the breach, Cisco gets a sudden, sharp, terrible feeling. 

The rolling, tumbling edge of the breach grows brittle, all smoothness lost to angular projections, jagged points of light that flicker and jerk and stab the air. To Cisco, the energy rolling off the breach feels like terrible music sounds: discordant, jarring, out of time. Wrong. He pulls back on reflex, the breach collapsing closed with a thud and a burst of air.

Cisco stares at the empty space where the breach had been. His brain is pounding. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. "Caitlin," he croaks, "Caitlin, I lost him."

"What?"

"Barry went through the breach," Cisco begins to explain. "The breach collapsed before he came back out. I think I can get him back." He resets his stance, unsteady, and begins to raise his right arm. Blood drips from his nose to the roof. There's a rushing in his ears. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

"No!" Caitlin cuts in. "Your blood pressure is plummeting. Don't you dare try to breach again. I'll come get–"

Cisco reaches up to his ear with his left hand, switching off the comm. He needs to concentrate to find Barry. But when he tries to vibe for Barry's location, everything feels scattered, distant. With no point of focus, the energy that swirls around his fist fizzles. His vision is turning gray and he sways to the side, stumbling. Something's wrong, wrong, wrong. 

As he collapses first to his knees and then to his side, the thudding, rushing sound of his pulse in his ears fades to a multilayered hum. Not now! Cisco thinks, pushing the song aside. But when he flounders for a grasp on the strings of reality his vision fades and fades until nothing is left but blackness. 

Blackness, and a subtle, lilting hum.


	3. Chapter 3

Not for the first time this month, Cisco regains consciousness in the S.T.A.R. labs medbay. Caitlin and Joe and Iris crowd around his bedside and he fills them in on what happened at the mall. Caitlin explains that she called Joe to pick up an unconscious Vibe and bring him back to Cortex.

"It wasn't the strangest patrol I've had to report to the station," Joe admits.

Cisco glances at the clock on the wall, frowns, and then looks to Caitlin. "You said Barry had ten minutes. Please tell me that was a cautious estimate."

"Yes. Harry's records weren't detailed enough to be certain about all of Florida, but if Barry's where you say the breach opened," she glances down, double-checking on a computer screen, "he has at least a few hours before any lasting harm is done. More, if he's able to run out of the affected area."

Cisco feels some of the tension drain from the room. A few hours is longer than they thought they'd have. Then he swallows, forces himself to sort his racing thoughts.

"It wasn't the bomb," he shakes his head. "I don't think that had anything to do with it."

"CCPD bomb squad verified it wasn't a bomb," confirms Joe. "They found a second backpack; it was a clever hoax, but a hoax."

"Something about the breach, then?" Iris suggests, turning a narrowed gaze on Cisco.

"I definitely haven't breached across a continent before." But he is confident it wasn't the distance. The other difference was that this was the first breach that put him and Barry in different dimensions.

"That explains the blood loss," says Caitlin.

Cisco swipes a finger under his nostrils and shrugs. "I felt something." While I was unconscious, he doesn't add. The feeling remains even as he's awake: a tug somewhere in what feels like the navel of his brain. It's better to focus on that than all the anxiety and guilt over Barry's safety swelling in his heart.

Cisco remembers the ansible he tried to design in 11th grade college physics class. Might he bring Barry back home using the thread that connected them? "I think I know how to get him back."

"How?" Iris's face is all eagerness. Joe and Caitlin project measured calm, a layer of steadiness over stormy interiors.

"It's kinda complicated," Cisco admits, toying with the edge of the sheet under his knees. He feels bad about what he's about to do, but he tells himself that an analogy isn't exactly a lie. It's a way to help them understand.

Joe wheels over a chair and sits. Caitlin looks up, setting aside Cisco's medical chart. Iris remains standing but shifts closer. Cisco suppresses his urge to frown. All he needs is a whiteboard and they'll be eating out of the palm of his hand.

He rubs his hands together briskly. "Okay, quick rundown of subatomic particle physics: Everything is made of atoms. Atoms were originally called atoms because science thought they couldn't be split, but they can."

"Nuclear power," says Iris.

Cisco nods. "Right. Fission releases the bits that make up atoms. And a crap ton of energy, but whatever. Now, those particles–the ones that make up atoms–can themselves be split. Turtles all the way down!"

Joe mouths 'turtles?' but Caitlin shakes her head: don't bother. Cisco stands and brushes past them both, pacing.

"The particles that make up atoms – neutrons and protons and so on – are made of quarks. Quark types have color names. They're actually too small to really be colored, that's just the nomenclature because a blue quark plus a red quark plus a green quark makes a complete, colorless triplet: a hadron." 

Joe looks lost already. "Okay..."

"Current physics says hadrons are the smallest things we can observe. A law of nature called quark confinement prevents the colored quarks linked in a hadron from being separated apart measurably. But!"

"'But?'" Caitlin prompts.

"I think," here Cisco pauses a second, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. "I think I might have split a hadron." A giddy grin spreads over his face, twinkle reaching his eyes. "And created a remotely entangled pair."

"With a breach?"

"Yes. The farther apart two quarks get, the more the color flux tube between them elongates. If elongated too far, it snaps, like a rubber band, creating a quark-antiquark pair. This is more stable than stretching out the previous quark entanglement." 

Joe gropes in the air with his hands. "You're saying... your boom tube snapped like a rubber band. And created what now?"

"The backlash from breaking a hadron's color confinement created a quark-antiquark pair. That wouldn't be remarkable except I may have messed up by isolating each half of the pair on opposite ends of the boom tube."

"...And that's... bad?"

"Energetically speaking, it's highly unfavorable."

"And _that's_ bad?"

"Look, what matters is that, like an electric field created by electric charges, the strong force between color charges follows field lines."

Joe frowns. Cisco sighs and says, "Picture iron filings around battery terminals, or metal dust around the poles of a magnet. Except the poles are in parallel universes."

Caitlin's eyes go wide with understanding. "You can make a map."

"I can feel one, yea." Cisco's smile drops. He does not clarify that it will be his powers, not his tech, that will detect the map. He does not clarify that he hasn't really been talking about particle physics, but rather about the substance of destinies.

He continues, "That's the idea, anyway. I don't know how long the field lines will hold steady; from a statistics point of view, separating an entangled pair was impossible in the first place."

Joe grunts. "With Barry's speed involved, we shouldn't be surprised by anything."

Cisco refrains from speaking to the vastness of the multiverse beyond just the Speed Force. Instead, he quips, "Bro ignored Time's Arrow like three months after getting his powers. I don't know why it took him so long with the rest of quantum mechanics."

Before the others can push him too hard on the details, Cisco sets off toward his lab. He brushes off Caitlin's objections about his health, lying about not having a headache. She scowls but agrees when he asks her to prepare the med bay for an extending vibing session. 

He does some last minute work on his vibe goggles, affixing some wires and LEDs to sell the idea, but that's mostly for show. What he actually intends to do isn't something he can even begin to explain to the others, because he can't explain it to himself. He takes as much time as he dares to search out some inner calm. He doesn't find much.

Returning to the medbay, Caitlin takes one look at his pale face and forces him to sit down on the bed. He begins rambling about particle entanglement again, liberally sprinkling in some vague technobabble he remembers from Star Trek. He waves his goggles and twirls a tiny screw driver. He offers to get out the whiteboard, but then Joe cuts in, trying to clarify with an analogy. Cisco smiles and shakes his head, latching onto the idea to "fix" Joe's understanding with a pop culture reference. The inane chatter helps soothe his nerves.

During all of this Iris is quiet, brow furrowing deeper and deeper. As Cisco wraps up another movie comparison, Joe shakes his head and says, "whatever you say, Cisco. Just bring him back safe."

"I'll try, sir."

"None of that 'try' business. You can do this, I know you can." 

Cisco wishes he could believe in himself half as much as Joe believes in him. He appreciates the sentiment, the vote of confidence conveyed through a firm clasp on his shoulder and the older man's steady gaze. If only a firm grasp and a steady gaze mattered at the scale of the multiverse, in the realms Cisco is preparing to wander. The deep end of a pool looks more daunting when you're the one on the diving board. It's even more terrifying when you're only just learning to swim.

Not trusting his words, Cisco simply nods. Fake it 'til you make it, baby. Do or do not, et cetera.

"Thank you," says Joe, earnest. "No matter how far away Barry gets, he'll still come back to his family." 

Cisco holds in a wince, echo of a distance melody playing in his mind. Family doesn't always come back, he knows.

Joe turns to Iris, missing Cisco's grimace. "Call me with an update when you can." They hug and he departs, looking weary but determined. Cisco settles onto the gurney.

Once her father has left, Iris rounds on Cisco, folding her arms across her chest and stepping right into his space. "Spill," she says. 

Cisco distracts himself by fishing a lollipop out of his pocket, by pretending the wrapper is stuck. "Hmmm..?" 

"Cisco, I believe you can bring Barry home just as much as my dad does. You don't have to try to smooth-talk us."

"That wasn't smooth talk!"

"I said you were trying to smooth-talk us, I didn't say it was actually smooth. Tell me what's wrong with this plan."

He crams the lollipop into his mouth and slumps back in the bed with a puff of exhaled air. "I'm relying more on gut intuition than technical genius here."

"And you don't like that."

He nods. "I hate it." 

She continues to watch him, and he soon breaks, setting his candy aside and babbling, "I don't need 100% certainty in my life but this is, like, way outside any reasonable tolerance parameter." His voice trembles, but then he barks a half-laugh to himself. "I had to use quantum chromodynamics to make it seem simpler. Quantum dynamics!"

Iris gives a pained half-smile at that.

He pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes shut. "If my powers made any sort of sense I could manipulate reality to guarantee this works but everything feels so wonky with Barry gone."

Iris unfolds her arms, leans on the edge of the bed nearest him. "Close your eyes for a second." She's trying to steel herself just as much as him. 

"Iris–"

"–Just do it. Please."

He complies. She kneels to be level to his height, fingers fiddling with the sheet. Softly, she asks, "Is Barry alive?"

"Yes," Cisco says immediately. Iris feels tension drain that she hadn't realized she'd been holding in. 

Then he frowns, eyes still shut. "I don't know how I know that but–"

"Don't question it. He's alive. You know it, I know it. Don't question it. Find your connection to him so you can bring him home." She swallows, glad he can't see the tears in her eyes. 

Cisco nods slowly. Of course Iris would speak of being connected to Barry. Behind his closed eyes he can picture Barry, crystal clear. He remembers Barry's voice talking about how Iris is his home. Cisco longs for Barry to look to him, but remembering Barry smiling at Iris... well, he can swallow down the bitterness long enough for a carefree joke.

He cracks an eye open. Caitlin has slipped back into the room, pausing in the doorway, but Iris is right there. He holds Iris's close gaze, more steady now than when he'd been when hiding behind a layer of long science words and half-hearted schemes. He's doing this for Barry, but he's also doing it for her. One fewer family split apart. 

"I'm like the multiverse's most powerful delivery man: neither snow nor rain nor dark of unimaginably immense void can stay me from bringing back your beau." 

She nods, a warm smile across her lips, so easy. "It was in you along, Cisco. You just have to see yourself the way we do."

Cisco taps his temple: "Worlds-ending power, itty-bitty living space," he jokes, but the grin doesn't reach his eyes. "Here's to hoping I don't make any wrong turns."

Iris' smile falters. "Cisco, are you sure you're ready to do this?" There's something like heartbreak in her eyes. 

Cisco reaches for his goggles, turns them over in his hands. He nods without meeting her gaze.

Iris leans in to squeeze his shoulder reassuringly. "I don't know how to thank you. Somehow, coffee at CC Jitters doesn't feel like enough."

"Let's up the ante to ice cream. But not right now. Right now, I'mma tune out for a minute. Some peace and quiet while I work the Ramon magic, please."

Iris casts a glance at Caitlin, who nods. "This is his normal anxious humor, so far as I can tell."

"The _Aladdin_ misquote gives it away," says Iris. 

Cisco groans, making a shooing gesture with his hands. "Busy man trying to rescue his bro here, if the Paraphasing Police would let him." As the ladies step back from his bedside, he mutters: "It was originally an ad lib anyway."

Cisco settles back on the pillow, slides on his vibing goggles, and says, "Be right back." 

In an instant, he's gone. 

* * *

Barry is lost. After dropping off the bomb in a cave under a desolate, charred husk of an island, he ran straight back to Cisco's breach, and through. But something had been wrong with the breach. It was like trying to run across a collapsing bridge, the structure falling to pieces under his feet.

Cisco's breaches usually made multiversal travel so easy. There was the same foggy background as time travel, but with a clear path, an easy stroll instead of a desperate bushwhack. Running through a boom tube was like having his hand held, like a gentle but impossibly strong current guiding his path. Cisco's tunnels created order from timeless chaos, the otherwise unimaginably vast confusion that Barry could only navigate blindly when grasped by desperation. The worlds sing for Cisco, when he asks it.

But this isn't Cisco's gentle guidance. Instead, everything around him is a swirling, violent storm. Barry has no anchor, no compass for orientation. He runs in an arbitrary direction and cannot tell if he is making progress. After an interminable time, he stops. He cannot tell, but he might have been running upward? No way to know. 

Nothing to do but run, a bolt of lightning in the void.

So Barry runs. 

And, as he runs, he begins to hum to himself. Anything to keep time.


	4. Chapter 4

Iris jolts awake in the chair.

"It's only me," Caitlin whispers. "Sorry to wake you." 

"S'fine." Iris fishes her cell phone out of her purse, which she noticed Caitlin had set aside. Checking the time, Iris winces. "I should probably get going."

And yet she doesn't move from her place at Cisco's side. Caitlin hovers with quiet, practiced precision, checking monitors and making notes on a clipboard. She reaches over Cisco's still form to make a minute change to his IV drip. 

Iris finds herself reaching for Cisco's hand, at the last second aborting the move and simply patting it instead of clasping it like she wants to. 

"You doing okay?" Caitlin asks, setting down her clipboard and pen light. 

Iris chews her lip. "All we ever do is use him as a tool for his powers. 'Cisco, vibe this.' 'Cisco, 'port us to Earth-23.' 'Cisco, why can't you find my dead grandmother's roommate's lost parakeet already?' Don't you think he's sick of it?"

Caitlin nods. "I've been thinking about that, too. Before his powers, it was his brain. 'Cisco, fix this.' 'Cisco, invent a nearly-magical device out of unobtainium under ridiculously tight time constraints with ridiculously tight parameters.'"

"To be fair, half of those gadgets were vacuum cleaners with LEDs strapped on."

"I cannot believe Snart fell for that twice."

Iris's eyes widen. "Nobody told me about the second time!" 

Caitlin has the grace to look guilty, avoiding eye contact. "They were probably afraid you'd be disappointed in them..?"

"Pfft... Embarrassment, I bet. There is no way Snart fell for it twice; I doubt he fell for it the first time. He was probably laughing the whole way back to his lair."

"He doesn't have a lair."

Iris raises a sharp eyebrow. 

"He doesn't have a lair! It's a bar."

Iris continues to stare. 

"This is probably exactly why they didn't tell you. Your glare is a deadly laser and most of us don't have a death wish."

Suddenly recognizing the weight of her words, Caitlin sobers. They look down at Cisco's still body. His chest rises slowly, so slowly. The tick of the EKG is steady but sedate.

Iris finally gathers the courage to voice her fear. "What if he isn't okay?"

This surprises Caitlin. Though Cisco was the one who hadn't given up on Barry when he went into the Speed Force, she'd seen how Iris never gave up on Barry during his nine-month coma. She'd always understood Iris as having more backbone than the rest of them put together. 

"Not Barry - I mean Cisco. What if Cisco doesn't come back?"

"Barry would find him, bring them both back."

"Barry would be running blind. They have this joke –"

"That Cisco's the eyes and ears and Barry's the feet? I know." Caitlin smiles softly. "But right now, it's just us. We'll have to be good enough for them both to come home to."

* * *

Cisco finds Barry by the wake of his running. To pin him down, he reaches out with a hand that is not a hand but rather a sense, a power that feels alien and new but also innate and totally natural. He pulls.

Barry collapses. 

Cisco winces. Next time, he'll be more gentle. He visualizes a scooping motion, a wafting like a breeze or a slow and shallow wave. He sets Barry back upright, drifts his speed back to him. The harsh electric buzzing of it would set Cisco's teeth on edge, if this place were real.

Barry is dazed, blinking into the space around him. Something is very, very wrong that he cannot run. But then a familiar feeling, an echo of a lullaby in the back of his mind. Deeper than his mother's lullabies, and so, so old. Ancient and rooted. 

He feels the speedforce connection come back, a warm glow, and scrambles to his feet. He is crying, joyful to have been found again by the fundamental force, even as he is lost between worlds. 

Also, Barry Allen is afraid. He wraps himself in the Speedforce, a sheath to shield him from the hint of a song, the vaguest brush with something Beyond even the Speedforce. Barry knows instinctively that the Beyond has not seen him, it lumbers and looms at a scale that notices not his confusion. Even with his connection to speed, Barry is lost in a place beyond comprehension.

Barry swallows, trembling. He wants to but is not yet ready to run again. Instead, he lets the lightning play under his skin, comforting and vast, if now dwarfed. He closes his eyes to find the steady core, himself and his speed intertwined. Touching it, feeling it rock-solid and sure, a column stretching to infinity, he nods. His resolve solidifies. Time to go home.

"Barry," comes a voice, soft but desperate. 

Barry opens his eyes. 

Cisco is there, standing directly in front of him in a plain t-shirt and corduroy slacks. The storm remains but Barry is no longer alone in it. The urge to run subsides. Where would he run to? Cisco is already right here. The indistinct world flexes around their bubble of calm. 

Cisco gropes the space around Barry, hands grasping at something over Barry's chest that Barry can't see, until he can. Cisco grunts, squeezes his fingers in a fist, and suddenly he's holding a broad, flat ribbon. He thrusts it toward Barry.

"Take this. Follow it to her."

Barry reaches up both hands to take hold of the ribbon. It's deep red and passes through the air to end somewhere in his chest. He can feel it now, woven into the core of his body, in this place without physical bodies. It's a profound and steady ache, bittersweet. 

Dazed, Barry looks up from the ribbon to meet Cisco's intensely focused face. "Is this...?"

"Iris," Cisco nods, then pushes Barry forward. "Go!"

The ribbon is suspended in space, one end clasped in Barry's grip, the other fading into the dark distance. It feels silken but immensely strong. It feels cool, and has a slow, steady pulse of its own. 

Barry's face settles in determination and he sets off, spooling the ribbon around his hand. 

After a few steps, he looks back. Cisco hasn't moved. His stance is wide, hand outstretched to Barry, eyes shut in concentration. 

Without opening his eyes, Cisco reprimands: "Barry, I can't hold this connection forever."

Barry glances down the ribbon to where it disappears in the tumultuous darkness, then turns fully to face Cisco. "What about you?"

Cisco's upheld arm wavers. He opens his eyes, jaw set tight. Lingering on this last look at Barry, Cisco wills his tears not to fall. This is the same choice he would make a thousand times over, though he gets only this once: He doesn't have the energy to both hold the path and walk it. "Go!" He shouts.

The ribbon in Barry's hand trembles. A sudden wind is picking up speed, swirling around them. Barry can hear it sing but he cannot feel the air on his skin or in his hair. In contrast, Cisco's hair is whipping in all directions, like he's barely holding his ground in the center of a maelstrom. 

"I'm coming back," Barry says, "I'll find you." 

Cisco closes his eyes with the tiniest of nods. He re-sets his stance, braces his reaching right arm with his left hand. 

Barry turns, and he runs. 

With Barry suddenly gone, Cisco has never felt so alone. 

Marking the path back to Iris with the mirage of a ribbon was childish, but Cisco had been too distracted to craft a more elegant plan. The red string was a visual metaphor Barry would understand, even if it failed to capture the depth and breadth and actual texture of his connection to Iris. 

As he sinks to his knees in the swirling storm, Cisco wonders if this final act made him the old matchmaker god, living in some distance place and tying mortals' lives together. 

But no: he doesn't weave destiny, he is simply able to perceive it. Doomed to see the will of the multiverse, but now cut off from it entirely. 

As Cisco lets himself fade from existence, washed from reality by the buffeting winds, he chances a peek into his home world. His parents and grandfather are playing dominoes with a friend at church. They'll be fine. 

Caitlin is holding Iris steady by the shoulders, and they're looking down over a sleeping Barry. 

Barry is home already, and this brings Cisco a small spark of warmth. 

He did it. He pushed Barry home. 

Consequently, he is flung out of orbit, a tiny once-satellite now drifting freely. 

* * *

Having fussed over the sleeping but otherwise healthy Barry, Iris returns to Cisco's bedside. The chair is frustratingly familiar after so many hours at his side. She wonders how long the journey feels to Cisco; Barry had many times commented on the deceptive timelessness of the Speedforce. 

From the outside, Cisco is fading from the world. His body flickers translucent-invisible-translucent, reminiscent of the image on a TV with a poorly-tuned antenna, but less static and more empty air. 

Iris once heard that some static on the TV is a result of cosmic background radiation, ripples in the universe echoing back to the Big Bang. She doesn't understand what that means, but suddenly flecks of interstellar dust are between Cisco and home. Inter-dimensional dust? When Cisco managed to find Barry, to somehow grab hold of Barry and send him to her, he must have strained his connection to here.

Cisco's a link in a chain across worlds, she thinks. Stretched thin, and fading. What might cut that chain? Might one drifting speck of dust carry him away into a sea of static? 

Iris reaches to hold Cisco's hand. When her fingers slip through empty air, the tears begin to fall. 

The backlighting in Cisco's vibing goggles flickers rapidly. Caitlin catalogs it as something like the rapid eye saccades of REM sleep, but immediately dismisses setting up a PET scan to confirm–the EEG sensors fall through his body to the sheets every time he goes incorporeal, so there's no way he's stable enough for PET. 

When he's most transparent Cisco's breathing comes in tiny, shallow sips, like he can't get enough oxygen, like the air is thin. Is he going to another place, half-anchored here? Or maybe even multiple other places? Or is he disappearing entirely? Cait and Iris try talking to him, but, if Cisco hears, he never responds coherently. 

Sometimes he mutters to himself. It doesn't sound like English, and it doesn't sound like Spanish, either. It's a buzzing hum at the back of his throat, low and lilting and somehow multi-layered before being suddenly cut off by a thrash of his head or a startled, terrified shout.

Twice Cisco yells "Barry!" He jerks upright, yanking on bedsheets before phasing through them entirely. The lights on his goggles flare, so pure and blue they're almost white, a piercing gaze that doesn't see this world at all. 

Then he collapses backward, crashing on his pillow, more corporeal for a time. He's solid long enough for Caitlin to strap on an EKG and frown deeply at the heart monitor's readout, shaking her head when Iris looks to her, pleading.

So Iris rights her chair, grabs for Cisco's hand again. It slips through. 

She curls her fingers into a fist at his side and continues to wait.


	5. Chapter 5

There's more to Vibe than vibrations as sound, more than thumps and whines and rumbles, because there's more to a wave than frequency. A person can sing hundreds of notes with the same pitch and still tell ahh from ohh. Texture and timbre, vibrato pulse and legato and staccato flows and Cisco is lost in a synaesthetic amalgam of touch-sound. 

The passage of time is unclear for him. His powers flex in ripples unfamiliar and formless. He feels voices like his own, but overlapping, many. He hears a familiar laugh, and the strum of a guitar. 

Cisco experiences a wondrous, dangerous dream. 

If he stopped to think, he might realize that it isn't a dream. It isn't a state humans have a word for; there'd never been any need. But, dream or not-dream, sensation prevents Cisco from stopping to think. There is too much to feel, too much to _be._

It begins gradually, with the now-typical out-of-body feeling Cisco associates with vibing. He's stepped away for a moment, gone elsewhere to observe other things. 

Cisco feels his perception swelling. Beyond the gurney in the sick bay in a concrete room by an underground particle accelerator, beyond the entire complex of S.T.A.R. labs with its grandiose architecture and too-small parking lot, beyond the chain-link fence and unmanned guard station at the edge of a property that once belonged to a demon-mentor but now belonged to Barry Allen, beyond the roost of the Flash to the Flash's territory, his turf, his hunting grounds. 

The streets of Central City are quiet this evening, the riverbank walk occupied by the occasional jogger, pair of lovers walking hand-in-hand, father pushing a stroller. Cisco swells beyond these places, these people and the threads of their experiences. He surrounds and engulfs single lives, passing through them with no more inertia than a stray swarm of neutrinos, otherworldly and unseen. 

Without anchor, his senses drift, wandering across dimensions. 

Things blend together at the scope of continents, worlds. The wider the view, the more things overlap, bleed together. There are a thousand students struggling with term papers at this moment, a hundred thousand night shift workers weary with the commute at this moment, a million mothers worrying over whether they've done enough to ensure their children's future happiness without pausing to remember the happiness of this moment. Cisco doesn't begrudge any of them their separate, common, lonely struggles. Cisco is moving beyond, at this moment. 

There are worlds beyond ours, he's seen. Farther out, and farther out still. Others right here, overlapping in a dimension so close that, to him, they're but a step back and to the left, closer than next door. To the rest of humanity, these places are not real in any corner of the whole of existence. 

Cisco's reality is very, very broad. 

And it is ever-expanding, out-racing the once-assumed heat death of the universe, out-racing the inflating distances between dots on the skin of a balloon.

The balloon continues to expand. 

His knowledge horizon swells, stretches beyond the Oort Cloud, beyond Proxima Centauri, beyond worlds with names he knows but does not bother to know how he knows. And each, with its thousand thousand mirrors vibrating behind. 

It is so full, but it leaves him empty. He has no touchstone. 

He is a diffuse sea of feeling. He is rarefied beyond interaction. He is so, so faint, and he is fading. 

Across the universal sea comes a tide. It is not the inexorable pull of a gravity wave, not the patchiness of some arbitrary heterogeneity left over from Before. Yes, Professor Hawking was right, there are agents of chaos out here, generators of randomness, but what is beyond moment-to-moment prediction is not beyond his Sight.

This tide has intention, information encoded at the scale of Everything, that only he can see. 

After unmarked time, a yearning surfaces in the wide net that now has reason to feel and perceive itself, once more, as Francisco Ramon. 

There it is: the melody, as he'd only ever heard it in his head. Armando's reedy but heartfelt high alto, Dante's rich bass. Francisco Ramon doesn't have a body, but he hums anyway, aching to add his smoky tenor and complete the song. 

It will be perfect, Cisco knows. Together with Armando and Dante, it will finally be a warm song, three-layered and full, rather than a hollow echo ringing in only one world. This will be beyond Cisco's world, beyond any world he can travel back from.

It will be perfect. Cisco knows it with a stunning certainty that is the wisdom and experience of the multiverse tapped directly: he doesn't see them yet, but he can sing himself home to his brothers. 

Now, Cisco feels his perception collapse back down to his self. In an effort to isolate his being from the worlds he suffuses, he stretches his fingers, then mimes removing his vibing gloves, his goggles. This will be beyond a song of the mind: this song needs cleverness, yes, but it also needs heart and needs soul. 

With this song, he is going to make a connection and he is going to ride that connection to them. 

In this moment he doesn't need to be in a physical location, and so he is not.

Francisco Ramon opens every channel, every path, every sense, every world. He stills as if drawing a slow breath, deep and steady. 

He begins to sing. 

The song will not emerge whole without all parts. As the first note, he calls upon Armando. With the sound, he perceives a drifting cloud, colorless and airy, opaque. This veil drifts, or he drifts, and time passes accordingly. Einstein, he supposes, was also right. 

Dismissing the thought as trivial, he holds Armando's note in his right hand and waits for it to steady. Armando's alto trembles with something of the sound of his father and his grandfather, and something of the smell of his mother's cooking. Cisco pushes away the memories, focusing on the sound, the sound that will guide him, the sound he will use to craft a path. Family yet alive are but a distraction. He dismisses the thought of them. 

Resolute, he reaches and strikes the second note to add Dante, creating a chord that reverberates between his left and right hands. It's a minor chord: he'd been saddened by their deaths at the time, after all. But in this veil the notes intertwine, a physical phenomenon that he feels as warmth and comfort and the voices of brothers he loves dearly and wishes to see very soon. 

Dante's note adds a layer of tremendous complexity, a push-and-pull tension. Armando had died young, but Dante had lived long enough to drift from Cisco. Feeling Dante's voice, a sensation of duty washes over Cisco. Conflicting responsibilities, loyalties to found family and to unrequited love. There is triumph, but there is also pain. The sound is the shape of a wound that Cisco had not taken the time to tend to, a wound that, uncared for, never had the chance to heal over. 

Unbidden, Caitlin's voice rises in his memory, and the song parts waver. She is urging him to patch things up with Dante. She is urging him to take of himself. She is taking care of him when his grief threatens to drown him. Her face swirls with the amalgam of HR and Ronnie, Harry and Joe, Wally and Jesse... There are flashes of Dr. Stein and Kendra and Henry and even Hartley. An entire chorus, chaotic and loud but whole, and strung through with lightning. These people, they care for him. 

But to walk this path, he must let them go. They cannot bring him to his brothers. 

He must let them go, and so he does. With colossal effort Cisco turns his back on the chorus.

With nothing else left, Cisco reclaims both his brothers' notes in his hands, shaping and smoothing them with care. He is moving through the veil more quickly now. He can almost feel his brothers: physical heat and a texture of finality. When the chord rings true deep in his heart he stills his excitement and once more reaches for the strings of reality. A path is opening before him.

The song lacks his voice, his will, to make the perfection manifest. But it is beautiful when incomplete and he finds his soul stirring. There, a sensation. This was the feeling of tears on his cheek, yes. Armando and Dante, as he is calling to them with their voices, they are creating a tone is so clear and so sharp that it is piercing the unknowable veil, cutting down anything in the way. Cisco will bend their voices into a bridge. Cisco will go to them soon, he knows it. 

His brothers' voices he invoked into the fabric of reality around him, causing the very matter and aether to sing. His voice, however, will be his own. Holding their sounds steady, Cisco forms himself. 

Waveforms collapse in improbable ways and there he is. He has no need for clothing but his subconscious appears to prefer a simplified version of his Vibe suit. He shrugs, re-experiencing the physical feeling of leather pulling at his skin. And, apparently, tears on his cheeks. He shakes his head to clear it. His hair fans out in slow motion, drifting. Odd gravity, he notes, in this not-place. A single teardrop detaches. He watches it drift by, eyes losing focus against the swirling clouds of the background veil. 

Cisco frowns. The voices of his brothers are holding steady, a droning, bittersweet chord with no end. The beginning, of course, was their deaths. 

Cisco is frowning because something else is missing. With clouds swirling he anticipates lightning. 

But this is not that kind of storm. He has chosen to walk beyond those memories. There is a path forming through the fog before him, and there is a clearing at the end of that path where his brothers await. His willpower creates the song that cuts all ties to bring him there. 

Hands full of music, Cisco opens his mouth and sings. 

The song is alive. His hands weave to complement his voice. He begins slowly, building volume and force. The mist flows away from before him. The act is easy. The path is clear. 

Cisco strides forward, his entire being vibrant, vibrating anticipation. 

He mentally apologizes that he couldn't be there to take Iris up on "thank you" ice cream with Barry. He wishes them well in their lives. 

A sharp jerk. 

In shifting his weight to take another step on the void path, Cisco finds he cannot raise his leg. He yanks his foot forward but it refuses to yield, feels bound at the ankle. 

Cisco's voice falters as he tugs. The mist surges, crowding and blurring the edges of the path. 

He stills, closing his eyes and focusing on holding the song, the perfect song. What a strange sensation, to have a body again. His form must be holding him back. No matter: Wave-particle duality would surely allow him this bit of decoherence.

Cisco wills himself to dissolve, to shake apart.

To leave life's ties behind and join his brothers in song.


	6. Chapter 6

"'sco, stop." 

Barry is not with Cisco. 

Cisco isn't in a place. There is no way for Barry to _be_ in this not-place.

And yet, it feels like Barry is right there. Barry... Barry doesn't have a color, doesn't have a shape to 'see.' He doesn't even have a sound. It's a stillness and open sureness so profound that Cisco can't gage its depth. But the stillness, the sureness, they are Barry, perceived as substance without form. 

"You were singing our song." Barry says. To get the sense of the words, Cisco must loosen his hold on the voices of Armando and Dante. He does not want to let them go, not after having finally found a way to them. Cisco aches to walk the path, to push through the fog to a beyond only he can tread. 

"Let me finish," Cisco's heart aches, "Please, please let me be done. You can go back to her; Let me rest where demons and death and nights of nightmare cannot walk."

The Barry-texture hole waits, hovers motionless and still. Barry's presence is a depth so deep that Cisco hears no echo in it, like the tranquil, damp air in a tunnel to forever. 

Dante's and Armando's notes waver. They do not buck to escape Cisco's grip but nor will they wait for his indecision. Cisco must choose: follow them, or not.

"Our song," Barry repeats.

Cisco shudders, drops his hands to his sides, and allows his brothers' voices to fade. His hum continues alone. 

The veil surges forward, erasing the path in a swath of fog. When the substance settles it becomes a blank, still canvas in all directions, and then that too begins to fade from Cisco's perception. An entire world, thin and translucent and everywhere, but going, gone. Quiet. Empty.

With a final twist of anguish, Cisco lets his own note fade with it. He drops to his knees, sobbing. 

All ties feel severed. Emptiness pervades.

Cisco drifts. Barry is next to him.

To fill the nothingness, Cisco sends his consciousness to places varied and beautiful and far-flung, but one place at a time: The Great Hexagon at the north pole of Saturn, the formation of the Deccan Traps, the Aurora Australis over a colony of emperor penguins, the impact of Theia on proto-Earth to create the moon, trilobites in a bioluminescent bay. Barry's presence is stable, unmoved by the wonders.

Cisco ponders whether Barry is actually experiencing any of this. He is surprised to find he cares deeply about the answer to that question. The feeling reminds him that he still has a heart to feel.

He decides to continue touring, just in case. He takes care to keep to their home plane of existence, suddenly wary of stumbling upon another Cisco, another Barry. Another temptation to flee to Armando and Dante. 

Much later, when he can think of no other distraction, he wakes up. 

The lab is dim. Barry is there and doesn't seem surprised when Cisco's eyes slide open. 

Barry was humming. The golden glow fades from his eyes as he lets the hum fade to a sub-audible purr. The vibrations echo in Cisco's chest for long, calm moment. 

"I was singing 'our' song?" Cisco asks, citing dream Barry. It's a test: Did all that happen? 

"You know," and when Barry hums a few more bars, it's so much sweeter, so much clearer and stronger and full of _life_. 

Cisco pulls himself into a seated position on the gurney. "How...?" He begins, but finds he doesn't have the energy. He sways, begins sliding backward. Barry catches him and then clamors into the bed, leaning back against the wall and settling Cisco against his chest with gentle strength. 

Barry radiates warmth and stability, a rumble from deep in his chest like a cat purring. Cisco soaks in the tranquil certainty for a long stretch, re-orienting himself to the feeling of a possessing body: limbs and heart rate and hair and teeth. He should probably brush those, he muses wryly. Though, if it's been any great length of time (of this, he has no idea), Caitlin has probably been brushing his teeth for him, even shaving any stubble on his face. The woman is a saint. 

Glancing around the med bay, Cisco sees that Barry shut off the sensors monitoring his vitals, probably to prevent them from alerting Caitlin that he's awake. He probably did it in the milliseconds between when Cisco woke up and when the monitor would have registered he was awake. Barry's a saint, too. 

And that's the crux of the problem, isn't it? To stand in the light of perfection and never have the courage to touch it. 

But Barry, apparently feeling no such compunctions, wraps his arms around Cisco from behind. 

"Humming it alone isn't the same," Barry says. 

"I don't understand," Cisco says, holding stiffly still but yearning to burrow into the embrace. 

Barry hugs Cisco tighter. "The song got me through, after that other Earth. I felt bits of something coming through the Speed Force. Well, not the Speed Force, actually. Something else, like a radio, poorly tuned? When I hummed my part your part came through more clearly. And then, when you found me, it was like two voices overlapping, but it didn't make sense as a song until the voices were together. The song emerges from the overlap. When you found me, your part of song was pouring out around you, in the storm." Barry paused, frowning. "You don't remember?"

Cisco collapses. Barry supports his weight in the hug. 

Cisco is floundering. "That song. I wrote that song when I was 14, Barry. That song was for," he chokes. "It was for Armando, and the second voice was for Dante. It's a funeral dirge. Except, when you sing it, it's the opposite. It's... anti-death."

"Sing your part."

The ever-present hum swells under Cisco's skin. His senses begin to reach out for the brothers he can longer feel. He shakes his head. "It's not for here. I don't know how you know it, but it's not for you."

Barry urges. "Please."

"I can't. Something like that can't be un-shared." Cisco is shivering in Barry's arms.

"Take a second to look at me, to really look at me," Barry says. 

As first Cisco thinks he doesn't need to look. He knows Barry. But the words are an echo, a plea for a chance to reinforce a connection, a level and open and honest bridge between them, altered now by their overwhelming experience, their vast and dizzyingly profound powers. Cisco shifts, sits up. He faces Barry, hands lingering in his lap, in Barry's lap. He takes a slow, deep breath. 

"Hello, Barry."

Barry smiles, broad and easy. His eyes turn up. "Hi."

It's a sparkling connection, Cisco can feel it, but the eye contact and Barry's goofy smile are too much and he can't help but laugh, a hint of tears in the corners of his eyes. The laugh plumbs his very soul, and echoes back to him through their link.

Barry shakes his head, still smiling, eyes equally moist. He grabs Cisco's shoulders and pulls them closer together. Cisco goes.

"Thank you," Barry says. "I was lost and you found me. Again and again, across the multiverse, you found me. And you sent me home to Iris."

Cisco's mouth twists, smile evaporated. Barry sighs.

"Cisco, I've loved Iris my entire life. That's a history of over two decades, rich with experience. I'm going to marry her someday."

Cisco leans his head against Barry's shoulder and nods. Barry looks down through narrowed eyes. "That... was not a sarcastic nod."

"Uh," Cisco stutters, "...spoilers?"

The second, equally tremendous smile on Barry's face is almost worth the jab to Cisco's heart. 

"I only met you, what, three years ago? And our bond brought each of us home, and you from the brink of death."

"I was not dying, jeez."

"'sco, there are people here who love you. I love you." 

Cisco swallows. The tears now flooding his eyes are a very different kind. He lets his hair fall around his face. 

Barry reaches up, tucking the curtain of hair behind Cisco's ear to reveal Cisco's temple, which he kisses softly. Cisco's breath hitches. The tears spill over his cheeks. 

"Cisco, I love you. I'll say it again and again, any time you ask, and more. You don't have to going look for love in death."

"Dante wasn't exactly a fount of loving-kindness."

"Redemption, then. That feeling, that longing..." Barry is openly weeping. "I could feel it, 'sco. I could feel the anticipation. You were slipping away from me. You were going to die and you were going to go to that death _happily_."

Cisco is suddenly filled with rage. He pulls away from Barry and stands from the bed, stumbling to turn around, tear-tracked face contorted. "Why did you stop me? Why not let me go?"" He pants, eyes darting around the room. "Why not let me go?"

Barry cringes. "I couldn't. You were pulling away and it – it was ripping something out of me and– " Barry swallows, gulping for air. He reaches for Cisco, then pulls back. His shoulders slump forward. "The Speed Force or - or something - suddenly flung me someplace very, very, very far from here and I found you. But you were walking away. I don't know what it would have meant for you to go on before me, for you to leave and cut me off like that.

"I tried calling out to you again and again. There was this fog, it kept coming and going. All I could think was I couldn't lose you, not again, so I started to hum the song."

Cisco crosses his arms over his chest in an attempt to hide their trembling. 

Barry looks down at his own hands. "And then, after a while, we were drifting through all of these beautiful experiences and I couldn't control us and I couldn't get us home and I didn't know if we'd ever be able to get home. But... I was okay with that, 'sco, because I was with you."

"You have Iris!"

"But I wouldn't have you! We wouldn't have you. The world wouldn't have you."

"What good has Vibe ever managed?"

"Forget Vibe for a moment, because you are so much more than your powers. Let me tell you about Francisco Ramon.

"Cisco Ramon is the kind of guy to have a superhero on speed dial but never brag about it in public, the person who'd die to protect my identity. Which, by the way: don't. You're the kind of guy who'd do anything to save his friends, his family, but never for himself. You build inventions that save lives, and build backup plans for your backup plans. You poured your heart into training me, and then training Jesse, and then training Wally, and you always made it fun. You made me speedster food that tastes... well, it keeps me alive? You're the man who knows a hundred ways to scare a goldfish, but has never employed them. You sing in the shower and apologize to your grandmother in a whisper right before drinking from the orange juice carton. Cisco, I could not ask for a more real, emotionally rich, earnest, loyal, enthusiastic person to be in my life." Barry reaches, tugs lightly on Cisco's hand with his own. "I can't imagine a day without you. Please don't ever leave me."

Cisco lets Barry intertwine their fingers but keeps his grip loose. He swipes at the tears in his eyes with the back of his free hand. "Better not let Iris catch you talking like this."

"You can't have a relationship like I have with Iris–" Cisco cringes, but Barry continues: "–without time. I already feel like I know you in my core, but I'd like to get to know you better. And, so you know: The Wests are a sharing family. Iris isn't jealous of my affection for you."

"Present tense? Pretty confident there."

"'sco, I have been crushing on you since, like, day one post-coma. And Iris was smitten a few months before then."

"Uh, no offense," Cisco begins, retreating into snark, "but that sounds complicated."

"She didn't say anything because Eddie was a closed relationship kind of guy, and then there was Kendra, and then..."

Cisco narrows his eyes, suddenly re-thinking all of Iris's many coffee date invitations. He steps closer to the gurney, alongside Barry. "Okay, lemme get this crystal clear. CRYSTAL. Clear. You and Iris," he brings up his hands to demonstrate. 

Barry raises an eyebrow, smirk deepening. 

After a second, Cisco drops his hands back down. "Nope. Not gonna believe it. Wake me up when the good-feels whammy wears off."

"Not a whammy; really happening. But, it would be best to hear it from Iris directly. How about a hug for now?" 

Barry reaches out his arms, inviting. They are both crying in slow, barely-contained way. Cisco stares at the open arms, emotions surging. It is too good to be true. He has never wanted to kiss Barry so much as he does right now. 

Those arms are an invitation to open, loving acceptance.

He and Barry are bound tight. They are an inevitability. They come crashing together in a warm tangle of arms and bedsheet, and everything finally feels like it fits. 


	7. Epilogue

Control is hard for Cisco, now that he's torn his powers wide open. Some days he finds himself distracted by other worlds and times, on the verge of drifting away. But Barry can often be at his side in an instant, grounding him back to his local reality. And even when Barry can't be there in person, Cisco knows he can feel for their connection and it will be there, humming and bright, solid, strong, and very, very real. 

Barry claims he can't see the connection but doesn't tease when Cisco tries to put it in words, or, failing that, tries to show him. It's not a line of communication, it's not like Jax and Dr. Stein describe their empathic bond. It's something deeper, more fundamental, woven into the fabric of their reality. And when that level of commitment, that sensation of expansiveness, threatens to overwhelm Cisco, he creates himself a little melody only he can hear. It has just two parts, but when the parts come together, it makes _music._

Love is easy for Cisco, now that he can freely give the love he has. And it grows, every day. 

Barry is a huge sentimental sap and buys a thin, soft velvet cord as part of a commitment ceremony. Iris ties the ends of the cord to each of their pinky fingers: Barry's right and Cisco's left. She kisses them each chastely on the forehead in turn, nodding at Barry with a solemnity that reminds Cisco of Princess Leia at the end of _Star Wars_. But then she ruins it by winking at Cisco and he bursts into a fit of giggles. Yea, he loves her more than a bit, too. 

The cord is red, but you probably already knew that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this fic is based on a quote from Albert Einstein: "God does not play dice with the universe." 
> 
> What Einstein was saying was not that he necessarily believed in absolute determinism (destiny at the level of every particle, every interaction across the entire universe beginning to end) but rather that quantum mechanics is weird. Like, so weird it's hard to believe. Einstein died still searching for a fundamental certainty underlying everything, but we now know that quantum mechanics, however bizarre its implications, is a very useful understanding of the universe, allowing us to have MRI machines and nuclear power and so on. One of professor Stephen Hawking's key accomplishments was to propose that black holes emit particles at random and consume information. The implication is that there *is* true randomness in the universe, rather than us (or anyone!) being able to perfectly define particles more precisely than describing them at level of systems. 
> 
> Now imagine being Cisco, with his ability to peek anywhere in the timeline, anyplace in the multiverse, knowing anything at any scale. His abilities break everything about humankind's understanding of the nature of reality and, I hope you agree, the resulting angst is so, so good.


End file.
